TURKEY FIGHTS GENOCIDE CLAIM
By Benjamin Harvey
Baltimore Sun
The Associated Press
Oct 10 2006
Prime minister says ‘systematic lie machine’ at work in debate with
France Originally published October 10, 2006, 10:09 AM EDT
ISTANBUL, TURKEY // Turkey’s prime minister vowed today to fight
against what he called a "systematic lie machine" pushing to label
Turkey’s World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide.
The remarks were made in reaction to a proposed French law that would
make it a crime to deny that the killings of as many as 1.5 million
Armenians amounted to genocide.
The proposed law has sparked outrage in Turkey against France and the
European Union, both of which have sharply criticized Turkey for not
permitting freedom of expression, particularly on the highly emotional
Armenian issue.
"Let no one doubt that the Turkish Republic state and its people are
capable of breaking this systematic lie machine and of dispersing
these clouds of disinformation," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said in an address to his party.
"There can be no legal justification for making it a crime to say a
lie is a lie."
Turkey’s official policy is to acknowledge that large numbers of
Armenians were killed by Turks, but to reject the overall figure
of 1.5 million as inflated and to say the deaths occurred in civil
unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Saying otherwise in Turkey can lead to criminal prosecution.
Erdogan repeated his past calls to Armenia to jointly research the
killings by opening the historical archives of both countries to
historians, complaining that Armenia had not responded to his requests
to do so.
He said the proposed French law was inconsistent with the principle
of freedom of expression, and accused France of ignoring its own
history while trying to legislate the facts of Turkey’s.
"Let the lie and slander machines look at their own history," he said,
listing 11 African countries in which France has a colonial past.
France’s lower house of parliament is to debate the bill on Thursday.
Under the bill, people who contest that there was an Armenian genocide
would risk up to a year in prison and fines of up to $57,000.
Some Turkish legislators have proposed tit-for-tat measures such as
erecting statues to an "Algerian genocide" committed by France and
to passing a reciprocal law that would make denying it a crime.
Turkey’s foremost Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, who has been tried
repeatedly in Turkey for saying Turks committed genocide against
Armenians, said passing the French law would be a mistake.
"Even if it appears that the Armenian genocide denial law acts in
the principle of universal human rights and responsibilities like the
struggle against genocide, we believe it erases the basic principle
that makes human rights possible, the principle of free expression,"
he said in a statement issued in both French and Turkish.
"Moreover, we think there is no need to support with laws the
historical truths of what the Armenian people have lived through in
the past. Because looking correctly at history does not require a law,
but conscience and morality."
Dink’s letter was signed by two other journalists at Agos, an
Istanbul-based bilingual Armenian-Turkish newspaper.
Some 100 Turks representing two different political parties gathered
in front of the French Embassy in Ankara today, calling for a boycott
against French goods.
Erdogan had previously called on French companies with interests in
Turkey to lobby against the proposed genocide bill.